“Oberschlesien - We Are The Heirs Of Hate”

European Media Awards. Grand Award in 2013. Vienna.
Since the end of the Second World War, entire ethnic groups have begun to disappear - the Silesian, Pomeranian, Masurian. Indifference and silence overshadow the gravity of this historical reality.
Upper Silesia has always been a landscape of encounters and a bridge between Western and Eastern Europe. After the Second World War, millions of people from the annexed eastern Polish territories were forcibly resettled here. They brought their culture into this new, foreign world, and immediately collided with the traditions of the local population. From then on, old and new inhabitants, winners and losers, had to live as next-door neighbors. The only thing which united these people was their broken biographies. Was it possible for a new community to grow together on such turbulent soil?
This is a landscape of sorrow; sorrow and trauma. It is difficult to get out of that. It is a trauma - unprocessed, open; one that somehow always surfaces at the moment when we are not able to mourn these things.
I am in Upper Silesia and I am looking at the land and its people. I can see rubble and ashes, uprooted people, confused identities, uncertainty. The new Polish settlers continue to fight a war against a German and Jewish legacy which is irksome to them; they maintain an old concept of the enemy from their home country. The history of Upper Silesia has been suppressed for more than seventy years. The Jewish, German, and Silesian legacy has been gouged out of the landscape. I ask myself, what will happen to a land and its people when its history has been denied and its historical roots have been severed? The younger generation is asking for it. The future generations would like to know where they are living. They conjecture about the existence of a Silesia that does not exist anymore; a rich land full of life, history, culture, and tolerance. Even when their fathers remain silent, the youth have a right to find answers to their questions.

[@Mechtal27]

Mieszkam w Bytomiu i zawsze marzyłem aby gdzieś oglądać świadków lub osób które przeżyły tamte czasy w Bytomiu lub na górnym Śląsku

[@barbarasunday3514]

I'm one generation removed from an ethnic German family from Schlesien who lost everything they had ,twice, during the wars and the Expulsions. My Oma and Opa, my aunt and my father were blessed to come to America, but i remember seeing signs of psychological scars that i am only now beginning to understand. Thanks for posting this.

[@silesianslonskoeagle]

Welcome to the Awakening! The horrors, genocidal ethnic cleansing, mass deportations to Siberia. Now is the time for answers, I lost family who were erased from records as if they never existed, well I am their voice!

[@thekeegan985]

My family the Von Kulmiz Family help make silesian industries what they are today. They still teach about my 4x great grandfather carl frederich Von Kulmiz in polish museums. A German Family Who had been in silesia for hundreds of years.

[@basru1234]

Bardzo dobrze zrobiony film.

[@jurekmaczynski1945]

Nice cutoff date, 1945. All was well in Silesia before then until Poland took over and "The Hate" started. No Freikorps massacres in 1919, nothing on the constant harrasment of Polish-leaning Silesians before and sfter by the Prussian state, Weimar Rep. and the Third Reich

[@ionidhunedoara1491]

The problem started with Prussian Germanization programs that intensified through Bismarck and came to a bloody zenith with Hitler. People coming back from slave labor or the transplanted refugees from Lwow and Wilno were not amenable to the current "multi-culti" word salad buffet of the western intelligentsia. Perhaps you would forebear to having neighbors that contributed to Wehrmacht and Selbeschutze. I would not.

[@julian-lh9df]

Who said that everything was well before 1945? Why would the documentary have to deal with topics such as the Freikorps? Its not the focus of the documentary, there are like 3000 times more documentaries, movies and other media about the crimes of the germans during the nazi times than there ever will be about this topic. If you dont want to hear about these people's fates, then dont watch the documentary, these things still happened though. Ignorant people like you are the reason why wars start. Two wrongs don't make a right.

[@onetrickpony442]

Adopting your narrative, I could also mention the instigation of the uprisings by the Polish government and the subsequent persecution and harassment of Silesians after the aforementioned uprisings were won by the "Silesians"

[@lutzvonpeter9170]

Show me a part of the German Empire where there was no civil war in 1919. The Poles wanted upper Silesia and fostered the revolt. What did the revolters expect?

[@onetrickpony442]

@lutzvonpeter9170 I don't know how this is relevant to what I wrote nor how do "uprisings" in Weimar Republic excuse persecution of Silesians by polish government. Moreover, uprisers got exactly what they wanted, polish Silesia, but a lot of those who were fighting on the polish side weren't even from the region

[@adlervonschlesien4869]

Polska z Sowietami zrobili nam wielką tragedię, okradli nas, pozbawili nas Ziemi, dziedzictwa, kultury, języka i historii

[@adlervonschlesien4869]

32:27 Jak slysza tego Poloka to dostaja herzklekotow

[@adlervonschlesien4869]

Indokrynowali bajtli we szulach podug polskij narracji i geszychty i durchs indokrynujom sam 1:07:26